CISDL Health & Education Programme
Responds to SDG 3 Good Health & Well-Being, SDG 5 Gender Equality & SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities
Dr. Maya Prabhu, Lead Counsel
International efforts to realize the universal right to health, especially for the bottom billion countries, are only recently making progress, with a great deal of further work remaining. While there has been steady progress in many of the United Nation’s health-focused Millennium Development Goals, there is still a long way to go. Disparities remain with regard to water quality and sanitation, maternal and child health and various zoonotic diseases. In international law, many questions remain, including for the further development and implementation of the WHO Tobacco Convention, the Espoo Convention and its Kiev Protocol and the Minamata Convention. With likely agreement on a global sustainable development goal on health, there is a pressing need for cutting-edge new international legal research and education, including legal expertise, capacity and advice.
In contribution to global efforts, through our Health Programme in 2022-2027, CISDL aims to:
- Advance knowledge and understanding of international law on health for sustainable development, building global legal research and advisory capacity, and disseminating key findings to the public, academia and decision-makers.
- Lead new legal research and education on international legal instruments for eco-health, including international impact assessment principles and instruments, treaties on hazardous wastes, chemicals and ozone, and transboundary pollution.
- Lead new legal research and education on respect for the human right to health, including mental health, and on how innovative international health law-making processes and the regulation of international health services can be strengthened and implemented.
Lead Counsel: Dr. Maya Prabhu, M.Sc, M.D, LL.B (Canada)
Programme Coordinator: TBC
Legal Research Fellowship: Dr. Fabiano de Andrade Correa, Ph.D., LL.M. (Brazil/Italy); ; Adv. Cairo Robb M.A., U.L.B. (UK).
CISDL Legal Specialist Award
CISDL Legal Specialist Award 2022: Prof. Brigit Toebes, University of Groningen, Netherlands
CISDL Legal Specialist Award 2019: Adv. Cairo Robb
CISDL Legal Specialist Award 2018: Dr Dane Ratliff
Key Publications
- Health and Human Rights: Global and European Perspectives by Brigit Toebes, Mette Hartlev, Aart Hendriks, Katharina O Cathaoir, Janne Rothmar Herrmann and Henriette Sinding Aasen (2nd Ed., Intersentia 2022): This book explores a range of themes and dimensions of ‘health and human rights’ and discusses the approaches of the UN, Council of Europe and EU to health and human rights, as well as a number of important themes including autonomy and paternalism, vulnerability and entitlements, abortion, digitisation and artificial intelligence, and questions surrounding death and dying.
- Rethinking Participation in Global Governance: Voice and Influence after Stakeholder Reforms in Global Finance and Health by Joost Pauwelyn, Martino Maggetti, Tim Buthe, Ayelet Berman (eds.) (Oxford University Press 2022): This book explores the consequences of stakeholder participation reforms in the global governance of health and finance by examining treaty-based intergovernmental organizations alongside newer forms of global governance such as trans-governmental regulatory networks, multi-stakeholder partnerships, and private standard setting bodies.
- Health law: frameworks and context by Anne-Maree Farrell, John Devereux, Isabel Karpin, and Penelope Weller (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2017): Drawing upon a range of disciplinary perspectives, Health Law: Frameworks and Context adopts a theoretically informed and principles-based approach to examining health law. Appealing to students and academic scholars alike, the text moves beyond traditional medical law frameworks to provide a broader contextual understanding of the way in which law intersects with health.
- ‘Health’ by Gian Luca Burci and Andrew Cassels in Jacob Katz Cogan, Ian Hurd, Ian Johnstone, The Oxford Handbook of International Organizations (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2016): This leading textbook provides the definitive introduction to modern international organizations, from the legal charters of their beginnings to the issues they engage with in the contemporary world. In his analysis of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Criminal Court and ten other prominent global institutions, Hurd combines legal, empirical, and theoretical approaches in an accessible and cohesive package.
- Global Health Law by Lawrence O. Gostin (Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2014): This book systematically defines the burgeoning field of global health law, Lawrence Gostin drives home the need for effective global governance for health and offers a blueprint for reform, based on the principle that the opportunity to live a healthy life is a basic human right.
- The Right to Health: A Multi-Country Study of Law, Policy and Practice by Brigit Toebes, Rhonda Ferguson, Milan M. Markovic, Obiajulu Nnamuchi (Springer 2014): Written by experts from more than ten different countries with each of them analyzing the right to health from his or her country’s or region’s perspective, this book provides an interdisciplinary and comparative human rights analysis and accommodates the increasing interest by the public health community in human rights, and explains how the right to health can be implemented.
- Winfried Huck et al., ‘The Right to Breathe Clean Air and Access to Justice – Legal State of Play in International, European and National Law’ (2021) 13(10) International Environmental Law (eJournal)
- Wendy E. Parmet, Lorianne Sainsbury-Wong, Maya Prabhu, ‘Immigration and Health: Law, Policy, and Ethics’ (2017) Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 45(S1), 55-59.
- Y. S. Wong, P. Allotey and D. D. Reidpath, ‘Sustainable development goals, universal health coverage and equity in health systems: the Orang Asli commons approach’ (2016) 1:e12 Glob Health Epidemiol Genom, 1
- Brigit Toebes, ‘International health law: an emerging field of public international law’ (2015), 55(3) Indian Journal of International Law, 299